A day after 11 trophy-winning Serbian water polo players withdrew from the national team due to statements made by Slobodan Soro, the Water Polo Federation of Serbia (VSS) has also released a statement.
We transmit the VSS statement in its entirety:
“The Water Polo Federation of Serbia is obliged to be precise. We do not wish to deprive the public of any information, and therefore we will publish the letter from the eleven players that arrived at the Federation’s address yesterday in its entirety; however, for the sake of the truth, we are obliged to note that these are not eleven current national team members, but rather four current and seven former ones.
Why do we note this? At the last competition (World Cup qualifiers), which the Serbian water polo national team played under the leadership of Uroš Stevanović, also now a former head coach, but current at the time, players Strahinja Rašović (34), Sava Ranđelović (32), Radoslav Filipović (28), Radomir Drašović (28), Nemanja Vico (31), Nikola Dedović (34), and Viktor Rašović (32) were not called up to the national team. Whether they were not called up due to their age, poor form, a change of generations, or some other reason, we do not wish to get into that, but we wish to state that this is the factual situation and that they were not on the list of the then-head coach Uroš Stevanović.
Four players were indeed called up, and of them, three participated in the competition—Nikola Jakšić (29), Petar Jakšić (24), and Đorđe Lazić (30)—while Dušan Mandić (31) could not perform due to an injury. Therefore, we believed the public was entitled to be informed and that, if it is already insisted upon that the players are national team members—which they certainly all were at different periods of their careers—it should then be precisely stated who are current and who are former national team members, as it was specifically Uroš Stevanović who decided on this when he made the list of players for the last competition in which he led the Serbian national team.
Before publishing the letter from the eleven players in its entirety, we wish to further emphasize that as an organization, we do not wish to participate in any way in what has become of a completely natural process in a sports organization like the water polo federation—namely, the election of leadership which takes place regularly every four years and which proceeded without any friction, but has turned into a pure political confrontation and the misuse of sport for political purposes. We are a sports organization, not a political one, and whoever among the current or former water polo players, coaches, or members of the Federation wishes to engage in politics has every right to do so, but what they do not have the right to do is use their current or former sporting position for those purposes. The desire is obvious, and it is completely clear that someone is trying to achieve their political goals through water polo, and this is confirmed by the way a significant part of the political public was switched on as if by a button. The Water Polo Federation does not wish to participate in this and condemns every misuse of sport for political purposes.”
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Source: Serbian Times; Photo: VSS